Me on Monday - and breathe

It's been a gift knitting, parcel posting, tetrapack recycling, sneaky lunch taking, shirt washing, parcel packing TV watching kind of a weekend.

One of my grandsons has a birthday next month. I bought his present before Christmas and had the idea of knitting some hats for his Mum, Dad and younger brother. I was doing well and then someone asked me if I would knit a baby blanket and I was momentarily distracted. This meant I had to knit like mad on Saturday but I had things to do first. In this neck of the woods the recycling people won't accept tetrapacks - those juice and milk containers that use waxed or plasticised cardboard - so we have to save them and take them to the tip ... only it's not called the tip officially any more ... anyway we also had a bag of dead batteries so we took those too.

This was thirsty work so I was thinking that we would go straight home and have a cuppa when Mr M turned into the car park by The Range.

Now I don't know about you but The Range is one of those stores that always has something I desperately need, and Saturday was no exception. They had a Christmas goodie bag for less than £10 that contained loads of things I loved as well as a few things I will never use but my granddaughter who is a scrapbooker will love. Mr M pointed to a bag of very colourful buttons and said "They're cheap" - well they look lovely in one of the jars on the shelf I bought card blanks for Christmas cards and two D-ring albums. We did look at their coffee shop but it was full so we nipped across to Morrisons and as it was lunch time we had a sandwich as well as a drink.

Then we went home the pretty way. The direct route is about three miles from one side of the city to the other. We went out onto the "Gwent Levels" and toured through the villages Redwick, Goldcliff, Whitson etc, noted the changes that have occurred since we last travelled that way, discussed the state of the reens* and wondered if global warning will cover this area in water before or after we are gone.

Then we came home. I finished the hat, packed everything into a box ready for posting this week. Then I put a load of washing in and started the baby blanket.

*Reens are what we call the drainage ditches that run through the levels. because the land is actually only a couple of feet above sea level it is just the sea wall that prevents it being flooded the whole time. The reens take the excess water and drain it into a couple of main ditches - Monk's Ditch being the biggest and that gives you some idea of when the reens were dug - There is a system of sluices and pumps that open and shut when the tide comes in because we have the second highest tidal rise and fall in the world here in the Bristol Channel.

All fascinating if you like that sort of thing.

The idea of Me on Monday was given to us by Sian over at FromHighinTheSky